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SpaceX's Starbase general manager, Kathy Leuders, has shared details about when her firm will catch the Starship second-stage rocket with the tower catch arms. SpaceX made history in October after it caught the Super Heavy booster for the first time with the launch tower. The achievement was remarkable, particularly since the booster catch was successful on its first attempt - an outcome many industry watchers had been skeptical of. The tower catch is key to Starship's goal of rapid re-usability, and the next step in the process is to catch the upper-stage rocket with the tower arms.
Speaking at an event last week, Leuders shared that SpaceX plans to catch the second stage sometime next year and launch as many as 25 Starship missions in 2025. The year is crucial in Starship development since it will also test in-space propellant transfer to develop a key capability for NASA's Artemis program.
SpaceX Official Shares Key Details For Starship Testing In 2025
During her talk at the CONACES 2024 conference, Leuders shared that SpaceX is taking steps to ensure that when it does fully go orbital with Starship, it does so safely. According to her, SpaceX must continue to learn and meet testing milestones to eventually conduct Starship missions to the Moon and Mars.
Commenting on the historic Starship Flight 5 tower catch, Leuders shared that getting the booster back to the site was important since it allowed SpaceX to "get footage of Starship landing on its location and get thermal data on the vehicle."
While catching the Super Heavy booster with the tower is a major achievement, catching the upper-stage ship is more important. This is because even though the booster is larger than the ship, the ship returns to land from a higher altitude. As a result, the risk of anomalies or untoward components damaging the pad or falling on nearby areas is greater with the second stage Starship.
At the end of her talk, when asked when SpaceX will catch the second stage Starship with the tower, Leuders shared that the attempt can be in 2025. She outlined that the upcoming Starship flights, including Flight 6 on November 18th, "are critical missions for us to continue to understand the flight dynamics on the Starship [upper stage] in particular. You want to make sure that we can really control an orbital vehicle before we have it go orbital."
As a result, the next few missions "are really about us targeting and making sure we get that figured out. So if they go well, we would love it to be like in the next six months," according to Leuders. She added that SpaceX and Elon would love to "have 25 missions a year" in 2025 and "in the next few years, a hundred." Musk wants to launch Starship a couple of times a day, shared Leuders, to develop an unprecedented rocket launch cadence.
Starship missions over the next couple of months could also see SpaceX fly the second-generation upper-stage rocket. This rocket has redesigned top fins and footage from local media also shows that this ship might have greater propellant capacity over its predecessor.
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